• Finish a study on the Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which lets employees collect pension payments in a special account while still employed. If it is losing money for the city, negotiations must begin to make it cost neutral.

Coming up: The Watchdog will examine Proposition D claims and provisions throughout the campaign, including one installment on each of the 10 conditions. Send tips and ideas to watchdog@uniontrib.com or call (619) 293-2275.

Perhaps no measure will garner as much attention locally this fall as Proposition D, the proposed half-cent increase to San Diego’s city sales tax.

The tax hike cannot be collected until the city adopts 10 proposed changes to employee pensions and operations, a list that has drawn praise and criticism in the past few weeks.

Mayor Jerry Sanders said there will be significant cuts to the city’s budget, including public safety, if voters reject the sales tax. Opponents of Proposition D say the changes will be watered down and provide little savings.

The Watchdog examined recent public statements about Proposition D and found that the facts are more complicated than the talking points.

Mayor’s “hammer”

CLAIM: Mayor Jerry Sanders says Proposition D has “put the hammer in my hand for the first time” to overhaul City Hall. He said proposed changes must be completed and then forwarded by him to the City Council before a sales-tax hike can take effect. In other words, if the mayor doesn’t believe reforms go far enough, he can block the tax increase.

ANALYSIS: The mayor does have a hammer, but it’s limited. The independent city auditor, Eduardo Luna, is entrusted under Proposition D to determine whether the city has completed each condition. Sanders’ role is to provide documentation to the city auditor for his determination. An opinion by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith on Thursday said the mayor doesn’t have discretion to withhold information. The auditor is not limited to receiving information from the mayor, so the City Council could provide it.

Of the 10 proposed changes, three require action from the mayor. Two have already been completed. The third — a study of the city pension program known as the Deferred Retirement Option Plan — does give the mayor a hammer. If he doesn’t believe enough progress has been made on the other nine conditions, Sanders could block the tax increase by not finishing the study.

“Pension tax”

CLAIM: Opponents of Proposition D, including City Councilman Carl DeMaio and Republican accountant April Boling, have repeatedly referred to the ballot measure as a pension tax. They say there is no guarantee that the estimated $103 million raised annually by the tax hike will go to public safety or other vital city services.

ANALYSIS: There is no guarantee in Proposition D that the money raised by the sales tax increase will go toward anything specific, but there is a simple reason why. If a proposed tax increase is earmarked for a specific purpose, the ballot measure would need a two-thirds majority to pass. Proposition D is a general purpose tax increase, meaning it can be used for anything, and only needs to receive more than 50 percent of the vote to pass. Supporters specifically made it a general tax to give it a better chance of passing.

Will the money be used to pay pensions? Most likely part of the money will go toward pensions. The money raised by the sales tax would go into the city’s $1.1 billion operating budget. The city pays about $170 million of that total toward pensions. So, in other words, for every dollar that goes into the operating budget, 15 cents of it goes to pension costs.

Safety impact

CLAIM: Sanders says there will be significant cuts to public safety if Proposition D is rejected. “To date, we’ve spared them, by and large, but we don’t have a lot left to cut,” he said. “And there’s going to be some public safety implications, implications in terms of services throughout the neighborhoods.”

ANALYSIS: The central focus of the pro-Proposition D argument will be public safety. The “Yes on D” website has red, white and blue police lights on its logo. The city made significant cuts to police and fire earlier this year by cutting 81 civilian positions in the police department and idling up to eight fire engines per day to save $11.5 million annually in overtime.

The city faces a $72 million deficit for the fiscal year that will start July 1. If Proposition D fails, city leaders will have to cut that amount from its $1.1 billion operating budget. The budgets for police and fire are a combined $567 million, so they will undoubtedly see cuts.

Those cuts are likely to be less severe than in other departments. Mayor Sanders issued a memo Tuesday that asked most city departments to identify cuts equal to nearly 24 percent of their discretionary budgets to help solve the deficit. Police and fire were asked to slice only 6.6 percent.

Weak or significant?

CLAIM: The “No on D: Stop the Sales Tax” campaign says Proposition D “lists several weak and meaningless conditions that will be quickly used by an unelected city auditor to trigger this sales tax.” Mayor Sanders has called it “the most significant opportunity for fundamental reform” since he took office in 2005.

ANALYSIS: To be sure, Proposition D is a unique ballot measure for many reasons. This is apparently the first time a municipality has tied a list of conditions to a ballot measure in the hopes of convincing voters to pass it.

The conditions could provide tremendous savings if implemented with a focus on cutting costs. If the focus is on doing as little as possible to meet the conditions, the city will likely be in an even worse financial mess when the sales tax hike expires in five years.

The Mayor’s Office has projected the range of savings at $3.5 million to $428 million over the next five years. That gap has drawn heavy criticism because critics believe the City Council members, many of whom have strong ties to labor, won’t force unions to make significant concessions. That’s why the council is expected to vote on many of the conditions before the Nov. 2 vote, so voters know which end of the range to expect.